[5] The combined entities made grants totaling about $71 million in 2018 (and disbursements of $56M), based on unaudited numbers reported by the foundation.

Skoll set up the foundation in 1999 to fund social entrepreneurship[6] through awards, grants and educational programs at Oxford and Harvard Universities.

[8][9] In 2001, Skoll hired Sally Osberg, formerly the founding executive director of the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose.

[15] The foundation, which moved to its Palo Alto headquarters in 2004, also collaborated closely with the Skoll Global Threats Fund, established in 2009, to address climate change, pandemics, water security, nuclear proliferation, and conflict in the Middle East.

Some of the fund's initiatives supported by the foundation have included an app, developed in partnership with the Brazilian Ministry of Health, that allowed monitoring of health conditions and potential infection by the Zika virus during the 2016 Olympics;[16] supporting surveillance technologies that identify epidemics at their earliest outbreak;[17] and development of an online tool that will help policymakers identify global water risk and food security hot spots.

Previously, the foundation partnered with Google's philanthropic arm, Google.org to fund Nathan Wolfe's 2008 research into cross-species transmission amongst Cameroonian bushmeat hunters.

[21] The African Field Epidemiology Network, a group that works with Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention were the foundation's first COVID-related grantees.

[20] In 2003, the foundation donated $7.5M to the Saïd Business School at Oxford University to establish the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship.